about with a quick pace and throwing the puffs towards it with all the force of his lungs.  How far he is successful it is no difficult matter to judge.  His skill, in fact, lies in choosing his time, when there is the greatest prospect of the continuance of fair weather in the ordinary course of nature:  but should he fail there is an effectual salvo.  He always promises to fulfil his agreement with a Deo volente clause, and so attributes his occasional disappointments to the particular interposition of the deity.  The cunning men who, in this and many other instances of conjuration, impose on the simple country people, are always Malayan adventurers, and not unfrequently priests.  The planter whose labour has been lost by such interruptions generally finds it too late in the season to begin on another ladang, and the ordinary resource for subsisting himself and family is to seek a spot of sawah ground, whose cultivation is less dependent upon accidental variations of weather.  In some districts much confusion in regard to the period of sowing is said to have arisen from a very extraordinary cause.  Anciently, say the natives, it was regulated by the stars, and particularly by the appearance (heliacal rising) of the bintang baniak or Pleiades; but after the introduction of the Mahometan religion they were induced to follow the returns of the puisa or great annual fast, and forgot their old rules.  The consequence of this was obvious, for the lunar year of the hejrah being eleven days short of the sidereal or solar year the order of the seasons was soon inverted; and it is only astonishing that its inaptness to the purposes of agriculture should not have been immediately discovered.

SOWING.

When the periodical rains begin to fall, which takes place gradually about October, the planter assembles his neighbours (whom he assists in turn), and with the aid of his whole family proceeds to sow his ground, endeavouring to complete the task in the course of one day.  In order to ensure success he fixes, by the priest’s assistance, on a lucky day, and vows the sacrifice of a kid if his crop should prove favourable; the performance of which is sacredly observed, and is the occasion of a feast in every family after harvest.  The manner of sowing (tugal-menugal) is this.  Two or three men enter the plantation, as it is usual to call the padi-field, holding in each hand sticks about five feet long and two inches diameter, bluntly pointed, with which, striking them into the ground as they advance, they make small, shallow holes, at the distance of about five inches from each other.  These are followed by the women and elder children with small baskets containing the seed-grain (saved with care from the choicest of the preceding crop) of which they drop four or five grains into every hole, and, passing on, are followed by the younger children who with their feet (in the use of which the natives are nearly as expert as with their hands) cover them lightly from the adjacent earth,